Jonathan Cohler: “ Fossil fuel combustion drove essentially none of the atmospheric CO2 growth” #427

Jonathan Cohler presents a newly submitted paper using mass conservation, isotopic signatures (delta 13C), and multiple datasets to apply the Keeling relation and infer a consistent intercept near -13.2‰ across sites and time spans. He argues this makes fossil fuels (signature ~-28‰) at most 26% of net atmospheric CO2 change and, using preindustrial constraints, essentially ~0–1.3%, contradicting claims by IPCC, NASA, NOAA, EPA, and the CO2 Coalition. He says CO2 residence time is ~3.8 years and attributes rising CO2 to natural temperature-driven ocean/soil outgassing. He criticizes the CO2 Coalition for conflating accounting identities with causation, describes harassment, and says he resigned.

00:00 New Paper Claim

01:29 Three Inputs Setup

03:25 Isotope Signatures 101

06:05 Keeling Relation Explained

10:17 Datasets And Intercepts

13:38 Solving For Fossil Fraction

22:22 Why Fossil Dominance Fails

25:16 Rejecting The Conclusion

28:04 Carbon Cycle Turnover

31:45 What Drives CO2 Rise

33:56 Ancient CO2 And Whataboutism

36:53 CO2 Coalition Errors Teaser

37:38 Accounting vs Causation

39:23 Feynman on Conservation

40:37 What Proves Causality

41:37 Atmospheric Balance Equation

42:53 Coalition Paper Misreads

46:25 Molecules Not Labeled

48:08 Residuals Aren't Attribution

49:56 Isotopes Discriminate Sources

51:27 Airborne Fraction Fallacy

53:41 Retention and Cycle Time

56:02 Harassment and Resignation

01:03:18 CO2 Forcing and Policy Costs

01:08:51 X Feedback and Contact

01:13:38 Wrap Up and Links

https://x.com/cohler

https://papers.jcohler.com/

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